Feb 21 2022

The Facilitated Group Process in ISD

I’ve been facilitating Groups of experts since 1979 – not on every project – but on a majority of them. And I’m talking hundreds of Instructional Development Projects.

I even wrote about that first experience – born of extreme frustration – 20 years after the fact – here.

It was an “EFX” if you will. ;)

In 1984 my business partners and I published two articles about the use of the FGP in both Analysis and in Design.

Performance-Based Curriculum Architecture Design via a Facilitated Group Process – 6 page PDF– published in Training Magazine in September 1984. –This was the first publication about Curriculum Architecture Design. Plus – the original manuscript (30 pages) – How to Build a Training Structure That Won’t Keep Burning Down.

Models and Matrices – 5 page PDF, published in NSPI’s (ISPI’s) Performance & Instruction Journal, November 1984 – This was the first publication of the Performance and Enabler Analysis methods for ISD using a Facilitated Group Process that I have been using since 1979 and as an ISD consultant starting in 1982.

https://eppicinc.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/models-and-matrices-nspi-pij-1984.pdf

If I Could

If I could, I’d always do the following “aspects” of my projects of I’ve been facilitating Groups/Teams of experts since 1979 – not on every project – but on a majority of them.

And I’m talking hundreds of Instructional Development Projects, using an FGP approach – with Groups/Teams:

project planning
project management
analysis
design of an Instructional Architecture, Paths, and Planning Guides
design of the modular Events, Lessons and Instructional Activities
development of the modular Events, Lessons and Instructional Activities
pilot testing of the modular Events, Lessons and Instructional Activities

As I have indeed been able to use my Facilitated Group Process with teams of experts – on some of those aspects only occasionally and on other aspects most of the time.

This next graphic contains an element lifted from a 1991 newsletter – part of a series of quarterly newsletters that my firm decided to use to start to share our Instructional methodologies.

Not that facilitating a team of experts is easy-peasy. It is not.

It is just quicker and in my experience – it also provides more accurate, complete (yet incomplete), and appropriate Instructional Content and Methods – and does so MUCH MORE QUICKLY!

Most of my clients were always in a hurry – and in order to get them to agree to allow me to do Analysis (THE KEY TO SUCCESS!) I’d have to do the entire project – end to end – faster than what they were used to.

Master Performers Are THE Experts to Leverage

In the 1984 articles we shared our thoughts about Master Performers (What Gilbert called Exemplars).

Here – from the 1984 NSPI article:

If You Could bring the Non-Master Performers up to thePerformance Levels of the Master Performers – there MIGHT be a worthy PIP – Performance Improvement Potential.

And that might generate a worthy ROI – Return on Investment.

And that’s what it is all about IMO.

If it were all your money – how would you want it invested? On anything and everything that comes up – or on things with a sufficient return?